<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Perfectionism by oofmilk</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869341">Perfectionism</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oofmilk/pseuds/oofmilk'>oofmilk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Cracks in the Mask that is Monika [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Not A Game, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Perfectionism, natsuki and yuri are here but like. blink and you’ll miss them</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:34:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24869341</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oofmilk/pseuds/oofmilk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Monika is perfect in every single way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Monika &amp; Sayori (Doki Doki Literature Club!)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Cracks in the Mask that is Monika [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799629</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Perfectionism</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s just… perfect. Perfect! Perfect little Monika with her perfect hair and perfect clothes and perfect grades and perfect <em> everything. </em> She’s so vehemently perfect that it makes Sayori sick to think about. How could someone be that perfect? It confuses her to no end.</p>
<p>Not to mention that Monika is always so <em> busy. </em> The debate club, and student council president, and tennis in the fall, and swimming and diving in the winter, and badminton in the spring, and piano lessons, and starting her own club on top of it all. How does Monika find the time for everything? Especially on top of her perfect grades (all 100’s!)?</p>
<p>Maybe that’s what makes Sayori accept Monika’s proposal of <em> her </em> being the vice president of the new club, if only to relieve some of the responsibility. The Literature Club, she remembers, is what it’s called. Sayori doesn’t know where Monika’s pulling the time from to run this club, but she doesn’t question it. </p>
<p>They find two other members, just enough to be officially recognized as a club, and things go well. No, they go perfectly. Because Monika is perfect, so everything she does is perfect, without fail. They meet after the school sports are scheduled to, so it doesn’t conflict with badminton practice, Monika says, and that’s fine by Sayori.</p>
<p>And then, for the first time ever, Monika is late without notice. She’s been late before, because of practice running late, but she’s always texted. And that’s why Sayori is the vice president, so she can keep the club running in Monika’s stead. But there’s been no word from her, and her teammates say she didn’t show for practice, so Sayori is worried. </p>
<p>She leaves Natsuki and Yuri in the clubroom with the instructions of “Uh, just write some poetry? I’ll be back soon.” Sayori thinks about Monika’s schedule, and how she has mathematics as her final class, so she starts walking in that direction. But she’s only four steps in the direction of the mathematics classrooms when she hears crying coming from the bathroom.</p>
<p>Having a breakdown in the school bathroom is, in Sayori’s humble opinion, a high school staple. She can’t even count on two hands the amount of times she’s done so herself just this semester. But regardless of her own emotional instability, she doesn’t expect to find Monika, perfect-in-every-way Monika, sitting on the floor and clutching a test and sobbing.</p>
<p>Sayori isn’t sure what to make of the scene. Monika’s perfect, so why is she crying? She entertains the thought that maybe, <em> maybe</em>, Monika isn’t as perfect as everyone seems to think she is. Another, more pressing, thought enters Sayori’s mind: <em> How long has she been sitting here like this? </em></p>
<p>“Monika?” Sayori asks as she sits at her friend’s side. “Are you okay?”</p>
<p>Monika shakes as she looks up at Sayori, and Sayori isn’t ashamed to say that her friend looks like shit. Her makeup is running, and her tears have left tracks on her cheeks, and her eyes are red and puffy, and her nose is running. For someone so perfect in appearance, Monika sure is an ugly crier. </p>
<p>“They’re going to kill me,” Monika chokes out.</p>
<p>“Who?” Sayori asks, and she tries not to look alarmed at the fact that Monika thinks someone is going to kill her.</p>
<p>“My parents!” Monika explains. Her eyes dart around Sayori to the door, like she’s expecting them to walk through at any moment.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“B-Because I— I—“</p>
<p>She can’t force the words out, so Monika thrusts the test into Sayori’s hands. She reads the grade marked at the top in one of those red marker-pen things, and it reads a 99%. Sayori frowns. This grade is remarkable. Far better than any of the grades she’s received this school year, at least.</p>
<p>“They’re going to kill you over a ninety-nine percent on a test?” Sayori asks in confirmation.</p>
<p>“You don’t get it,” Monika says, and her eyes are wide but her pupils are small. “You don’t get it. They’re going to kill me. I’m going to go home and hand them this test and they’re going to kill me.”</p>
<p>“But why? This is a really good grade.” It hurts Sayori to see one of her best friends so upset. “Help me understand, Monika.”</p>
<p>“I’m— I’m supposed to be perfect! Perfect, perfect, perfect!” Monika almost yells. Sayori doesn’t think she’s ever seen the club president this stressed out. “They want me to be perfect! And this— this grade <em> isn’t </em> perfect! And they’re already pushing me <em> so hard </em> to do <em> so much </em> because I have to be perfect, and if I’m not perfect, then what good am I?”</p>
<p>“Monika…” Sayori doesn’t know what to say. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time. You’re only human.”</p>
<p>“But I have to! I have to be perfect because they make me and I’m going to take this test home and— and—“ Monika starts hyperventilating.</p>
<p>“Hey, hey, breathe with me,” Sayori says softly. “Deep breaths. In… and out…”</p>
<p>It takes far longer than it should, but Monika’s breathing does eventually return to normal. She still shakes, and she sniffles quietly, and God, how can Sayori make her go back to the clubroom like this? She stands up and pulls Monika to her feet.</p>
<p>“Go home,” Sayori says.</p>
<p>Monika’s eyes almost bug out of her head. “What?!”</p>
<p>“Go home, and get it over with. I… can’t offer much support, because I don’t know what it’s like to live like you do, but just get it over with.” Sayori offers her a smile. “I’ll tell the girls you got sick and went home early.”</p>
<p>Monika opens her mouth, closes it, opens, closes, before nodding and drifting, ghost-like, past Sayori and out of the bathroom. When Sayori eventually regains enough of her composure to leave, Monika is nowhere in sight. She returns to the clubroom and delivers the lie, which Natsuki and Yuri readily eat up. She doesn’t hear from her friend for the rest of the night, and she assumes it’s a good thing, but a small voice in her mind doesn’t believe that.</p>
<p>The next day Monika is back with that big, perfect smile of hers, and everything seems right in the world. It’s only because Sayori’s standing so close to her side in the clubroom that she notices what looks like a large bruise on Monika’s cheek that is definitely hand-shaped and definitely covered with makeup. She tries to ask about it, but Monika dodges her question, and Sayori can’t help but notice that the light in their leader’s eyes is dimmed.</p>
<p>“Okay, everyone!” Monika says, and that’s that on the questioning.</p>
<p>It troubles Sayori for the rest of the club meeting, but she doesn’t get another chance to ask. She suspects that Monika is actively trying to stop her from asking, but whether it’s because she’s scared to talk or because she’s trying to uphold her perfect image Sayori doesn’t know. But she’s seen beneath Monika’s perfect veneer to the less than perfect truth beneath, and she knows that that’s all her perfection is—an image. </p>
<p>Sayori only hopes it doesn’t kill her.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>